Recently (sort of) I chucked my near 6-years-old computer for a new Dell Inspiron 530 with Windows Vista. I used to use a 500 GB HD to store my editing footage previously, and it worked fine for a time, but Windows Vista stopped accepting it and crashed whenever I plugged it in after a few upgrades. It turns out it wasn't Vista compatable. Since then I have been using it by setting that HD on a older laptop and connecting through a network. Doing it that way is slow as hell, but it works.

Now though I have been running out of space on my computer again so I want to get a really good Hard Drive. Unfortionatly I don't know where to start looking. Can anyone reccommend me a good hard drive that is great for AMV work? I would prefer anything 500 GB or higher, bare minumum being 300 GB.

Hard drives should be OS independent ("vista compatibility" is just marketing hype).Your HD may have been failing, or the data may have gotten corrupted somehow.

that aside...WD velociraptor (2 or more in raid 0 is even more )

it's pricey, but it's pretty much the best performance drive that can be put into modern consumer-grade PCs.

If that's not quite for you, then pretty much any drive would do about the same.Big things to look for are:spindle speed (most desktop HDDs are 7200 rpm or 5400 rpm. Higher is generally better)avg seek time (lower = better)cache size (higher = better)

You'll also have to know what interface your computer can use. It's pretty much either IDE (aka EIDE, ATA) or SATA

Thank you very much for the great advice. Those WD velociraptors make me drool. But I had completely forgot to mention one little detail.

I'm looking more-so for a portable HD, since I'll be moving alot starting the fall and would need to bring it with me from place to place. I have a friend who just got a LaCie rugged and says it works like a dream except for some concern with the lack of a fan to cool it down. It works fine with mine as well, so that was a possibility, but I still wanted to make sure I have all my options in front of me before I end up with whatever first finds me.

Also, how do I find out what interface my computer can use? Is there an area in the control panel where I can find it?

You can right click my computer, properties, hardware tab, device manager and expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and see if you see SATA or Serial ATA anywhere...but the most reliable method is to open the case and look at the motherboard/existing hard drives

Word is the Intel X25-M is the best consumer SSD line right now. Although the OCZ Vertex series is a lot more affordable and has performance close to the Intels. Most others besides that are crap still.

As soon as I have another $200 to spare, I will be buying a 60gb Vertex one to use as my OS drive + program files. (And TF2/WoW *cough*) 60gb may seem small, but realistically you only need your OS, applications, and games on it, which should be plenty of room still. All your mass storage can go on normal magnetic for $100 for 1TB

Oh, I forgot to mention: The nice thing about the Solid State Drives is theres no moving parts. (They're like having a giant USB memory key) So if you move around a lot with it, it doesn't matter. Only issue is of course the SSDs are small, so you can't really use it for mass storage.

I would actually recommend the Western Digital RE3 1TB drives. They're enterprise level drives with added features if you decide to raid stripe them, and benchmarks put them very close to the Velociraptors. Another nice feature is they park the read head completely off the platter when not in use -- aka less chance of data corruption if you move the drive around since they are designed to dampen vibrations.

Also, if you want to ditch Vista, you can download the Windows7 Release candidate right now for free from Microsoft Technet. The RC is set to run until 2010 sometime... basically until Win7 comes out and then anyone with Vista gets a free upgrade to Win7 from Microsoft anyways. I've been using the Win7 beta version since it was released and it's been very stable and more enjoyable than Vista.

As far as working on AMVs, you might be looking for more space, as you need space for all that source footage and exporting.I would recommend Seagate Hard Drives. They are extremely reliable and have a great warranty.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148295750GB for $130. You can see the price difference--I noticed you need to be moving from place to place. So it looks like you need to purchase an external hard drive then right? If you 'have' to purchase an external hard drive, you can, but realize you will be suffering from a huge loss of speed, unless your computer as eSATA, which i doubt.

Externals are really only good for storage, and not active video editing or using as a scratch disk, you will feel some lag and choppiness if you end up using an external hard drive as a scratch disk.

Internal drives should be able to handle moving without much trouble. My desktop travels ~350 miles twice a year, a little more depending on how many LANs I go to. No drive failure yet (and driving through Wisconsin on I-90/94 isn't exactly a smooth ride)

As far as externals go, WD passports are nice (and don't require an external power supply, completely powered from USB). Easy to get fingerprints all over, but nice...but they only spin at 5400rpm, so a great editing drive it is not.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136300

If you really need to edit using an external get a normal 7200 rpm internal drive and an external enclosure as suggested above, though I'd look for one that uses firewire (ie, 1394) if your computer has a firewire port (or eSATA if it has an eSATA port)